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The next server stress test with a new batch of Beta-keys is getting closer. We had really hoped to be able to make the stress test (and send more betakeys) this week, but unfortunately we haven’t fixed all the bugs we discovered at the previous stress test yet. So once more we pray that you have a bit more patience and with a little luck we’ll be able to do the stress test next week.

For the coming stress test we’ll, like the previous stress test, send 7000 new Beta-keys, an “invitation” mail to players who already are Beta-players and a reminder mail to those who have received a key, but haven’t activated it yet. So look out for the mail, and add “[email protected]” and “[email protected]” to your address book, if you want to be sure that your spam/junk filter doesn’t catch mails from us.

The weekly Intelligence Bulletin will take a break the next three weeks, as the highly intelligent and incredibly handsome editor of the Bulletin (ed. Cut the crap! /Reto.KenSolo) will take a loooong vacation and has promised his wife and kids not to open his laptop during his vacation.

…onwards to Developer Blogs and Team Debriefing (now with developer photos):

Once in a while we feature one of the developers from the team and tell you a bit about who they are and what they are working on. This time it’s our trigger happy Effects Artist Bo Heidelberg aka. Reto.BomberBo.

What is your gamertag in Heroes & Generals, and what’s the story behind it?
Reto.BomberBo – because I love guns and explosions!

What is your position at Reto-Moto?
Senior Visual Effects Artist – I’m making gunshots and explosions look good!

For how long have you been working here?
Since December 1st 2011.

What games have you worked on?
Hitman: Contracts
Hitman: Blood Money
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.

Which tools do you use for making Heroes & Generals?
Softimage XSI, Photoshop and FumeFX.

What are your hobbies?
Making electronic music, traveling and watching movies.

What’s the best thing about Heroes & Generals?
The endless possibilities for the future development of the game and the intensity of the battles.

I just wanted to show you a bit of the work that goes into making textures for the environment.

The diffuse texture I’m gonna show you here is for the old destroyed bridge at one of the new crossings in the ‘Town’ map (also often referred to as ‘Medium French Village’).

The old destroyed bridge

I started out modeling some stones in zbrush, then I arranged them in XSI and rendered out a normalmap, heightmap and an ambient occlusion map. I’m gonna use the ambient occlusion to kind of fake dust and dirt that has settled around the stones.

We’re working on a new mission type called ‘Interdiction’. An Interdiction-mission is triggered when a Fighter Squadron Assault Team intercept enemy supplies on the strategy map, thus giving a greater strategic importance to securing your supply lines. The mission is thought of as a single player mission where you play against time and AI controlled Anti-Air Guns in order to find and destroy the train transporting the resources to the front line.

The loadout of the train will vary depending on the type and amount resources being transported. So for instance if the supplies you intercept are for an Armor Assault Team, then there would be a few wagons carrying tanks and a few for the crew.

In order to make this possible we will also try a new way of resupplying planes; instead of having to land at some secret spot on the map, you will just fly your plane out of the map in the direction of your airfield. Once you are sufficiently far out, your current plane will fly on without you and you will be transferred to a new one that is on its way back to the battle.

And this weeks biggest event for us has no doubt been the release of the trailer. We started working on the trailer in the autumn last year and we’ve been very excited to see how it would be received by gamers and gaming media around the world. Luckily it has been quite well received and the majority of the comments on our YouTube channel (and anywhere else it has been uploaded) are very positive.

We hope that you will help us spread the trailer – share it on facebook, twitter, Google+ etc. to your friends and family and post it on any gamer forum you may encounter, so we can get our community to grow even more!

We’re planning a new stress test of the servers, so we can test how the servers behave in the new Bradley build, and if all goes well we’ll do it next week (but NO promises! :) ). This means that we’ll send out a new batch of Beta-keys quite soon, and for the last stress test we sent 7000 new Beta-keys! We usually run the servers 24/7, but when we do stress tests we close down the access to the servers 8 hours (or so) before, so you can’t log in before the stress test starts.

And just so you understand our selection process of how we choose who to send beta-keys to: we generally send keys on a first come, first serve basis, but we also send some using random selection. We feel that this is the most fair way to do it, where we reward those who have been on the list for a long time, but also give newcomers a chance to play Heroes & Generals and help us shape it into the game you want to play!

… but let’s proceed with Propaganda, Developer Blogs and Team Debriefing from this week:

Propaganda this Week

Come Out to Play Trailer

Heroes & Generals – Come Out to Play Trailer. Show it to your friends, share it on facebook and help us to make this video go viral!

Previews

It’s summer and it’s time for another group photo of the development team! One year ago we were 20 people on the photo we took outside our office and this year we are 26 hard working developers and administrative personnel.

Heroes & Generals – Come Out to Play TrailerShow it to your friends, share it on facebook and help us to make this video go viral!

We are proud to present our new Heroes & Generals “Come Out to Play” trailer.

Based on Heroes & Generals, the Massive Online Strategic Shooter being built by a veteran team that includes the original creators of the Hitman franchise, “Come Out to Play” is produced to entertain and inform. By splicing live action and in-game sequences together, the movie celebrates H&G’s innovative combined online first-person shooter and strategic campaign in an authentic World War II setting.

Community members and developers on the frontline

Community Stars

As a true testament to our open door development model, where developers work with Heroes & Generals players in the alpha and beta community to enhance the game, we invited some hardcore fans to join us on set for the filming of “Come Out to Play.” From near and far, these community co-stars arrived and happily joined members of our development team on the frontlines and in the strategy room for a few days of glorious make-believe war.

“We wish to create a living and breathing game universe, where we deliver the setting and the scene, but the real ‘star’ is the community who plays out all the active roles in a persistent war and helps us tweak the experience into the game that they want to play,” says Jacob Andersen, Game Director at Reto-Moto. “I believe that the ‘Come Out to Play’ trailer shows the scope of Heroes & Generals – and it’s just perfect that we have actual community members participating as actors in it!”